Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a longtime advocate of stricter gun control measures, introduced a bill Wednesday that would ban the sale and possession of bump-stock equipment and other devices that essentially turn a semiautomatic weapon into an automatic one.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) told reporters Tuesday that multiple bump stocks were found in the hotel room used by the shooter, who opened fire during the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on Sunday, killing 58 people and injuring over 500 others.

Except as provided in paragraph (2), on and after the date that is 180 days after the date of enactment of this subsection, it shall be unlawful for any person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or af- fecting interstate or foreign commerce, a trigger crank, a bump-fire device, or any part, combination of parts, component, device, attachment, or accessory that is de- signed or functions to accelerate the rate of fire of a semi- automatic rifle but not convert the semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun.

Again, the ATF deemed bump fire stocks to be legal firearm accessories about six years ago. Feinstein’s bill would not only prohibit bump fire stock sales to the public, but would outlaw their possession. That means tens…maybe hundreds of thousands of the items would have to be turned in or destroyed. Here we go.

The devil is in the details. What would the statutory definition of bump-fire device be?

Similarly: how would one determine what the lawful, vs unlawful, acceleration of rate of fire for any given semi-automatic firearm? Some people can use their booger hook to increase the rate of fire, as compared to someone else firing the same firearm.

Seems like knee-jerk, over-broad, overly ambiguous language. (Or in other words: par for the course for Diane “Mr. and Mrs. American: turn them all in!” Feinstein.

My thoughts exactly. Is going to the range and practicing rapid fire a violation? Would not then your own finger “accelerate” the rate of fire?

But then the engineer in me says that no external device which simply actuates the trigger is really accelerating the rate of fire. The cyclic rate of the weapon is what it is. Normally we cannot physically operated the weapon at that rate, but RoF is what it is. Again, the devil is in the details.

“de- signed or functions to accelerate the rate of fire of a semi- automatic rifle” sounds a lot like a binary trigger. It would be up to BATFE whims, as always. But what about a just a good 3 gun trigger? Is that designed to accelerate your rate of fire?

“any [thing]n that .. functions to accelerate the rate of fire of a semi- automatic rifle”

Your definition of rate of fire would not make since in the context of the bill, so that means rubber bands, “better” triggers, binary triggers, belt loops, and I imagine a great many other things illegal.

Congress can pass all the laws it wants to with regard to banning guns, magazines or accessories (such as bump-fire stocks), but since most of these items are not registered or “on the government’s books”, good luck with the compliance rate on that.

If they are banned the government will go to the manufacturers of these devices get their sales records then go to the retail outlets that the manufacturer sold them to and as virtually all retailers use a point of sale system, those things that scan the upc codes, then enter the upc of the bump fire stocks, do a search and in a few minutes, have the receipt number of evey stock that retailer sold grom there it’s easy to get the credit or debit card number, check number and account number, then the name address, social security number, etc. Think you are out of the woods if you paid cash, think again, if that retailer has loyalty cards,

To continue with my statement about loyalty cards, that is how retailers trick even cash purchasers into giving personal information, then once the government has the receipts, they can view your purchase history, how many cartridges, reloading supplies and tannerite you bought, which when the come to raid your home the media will gleefully report them as “bomb making materials. And if you bought it anonymously, how many people did you show it to, or you let use it at the range. People talk. If this ban goes through, dangerous precedents are set. Nothing much will happen right away, but the Democrats are salivating for the day when they have control of both houses and a leftist president, then things will start to move, how safe will you feal when the ATF starts promoting the 1800-be-a-narc lines, with promises of rewards? Or a friend gets himself into a bit of trouble, and cuts a deal to avoid going to jail, by turning you in? The best kept secrets are ones only you know about, think about it.

You and every other ultra liberal groups need to be acquainted with “what is due process law”. REALISTICALLY, YOU CAN NOT REGULATE DEVICES TO PREVENT THE EVIL ACTS FROM HAPPENING!! The ACTS OF EVIL HAPPENS, GROW UP!! It is totally absurd, more regulation will only criminalize LAW BIDDING CITIZENS, and give criminals and the elite a major advantage. If this horrible bill is put in place, we are one step closer in appealing/eliminating the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Look at a horrible event on September 11, 2001, why haven’t we banned Muslims from boarding on flights? That’s because it’s totally fucking absurd.

Slippery slope argument. A minimal amount of training will enable an average shooter to achieve extended, rapid, magazine emptying rates of fire that come close to that achieved by a bump-stock. Imposing mechanical restrictions on semi-automatic weapons is a dead-end argument that always depends on flawed lets-do-it-for-the-kids moral appeals for legitimacy.

Wouldn’t this also eliminate the entire aftermarket trigger manufacturing business as well? One could easily argue that a smoother lighter trigger would function to accelerate the rate of fire. And what’s next, things that make guns more accurate like scopes and pods?

It absolutely would; (you beat me to the punch there by a minute) — Right now anything that even decreases report by 1dB is considered to be a “silencer”, so I don’t see how this would be interpreted with any more leniency.

Any semiautomatic rifle with an aftermarket trigger would immediately be in a felonious legal gray area just to possess, with no grandfathering.

And yet in all reality none of these things accelerate the Rate of Fire (RoF). The actual RoF is the theoretical cyclic time of the gun and without internal modification to the moving mechanisms is fixed. What they are talking about is absolute nonsense. And what is the baseline of measure? Would Jerry Miculek be banned from ever picking up a gun?

Would cleaning, adjusting springs for ammo, smoothing parts and the like be considered internal changes?
Many older guns have worn out springs and/or were designed for ammo with different characteristics, many need replacement parts that can only be had in the aftermarket.
Full auto and bump fire are 2 different things. Bumpfire is a learned trick to use the recoil to cycle the trigger at the recoil rate. A “special stock” is not needed here.
So, now they want to modify the way people shoot a legal firearm?

The bump fire process has been around almost as long as semi auto has. This is just another attack on semiauto rifles – a backdoor means to confiscation

“…any part, combination of parts, component, device, attachment, or accessory that is designed or functions to accelerate the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle”

Actually, as written, this bill would make triggers like the Geissele S3G illegal to posess. (Nevermind the Echo, 3MR or Franklin Binary). “Accelerate” is a relative term. Accelerate from what? Stock triggers? I’m guessing that’s how it would be interpreted — What if the “semiautomatic rifle” starts out with a certain “rate of fire”? Then no acceleration would have occurred. Not sure how this could be enforced.

Dear President Trump. Senator Diane Feinstein has done such a wonderful job I demand that she be followed by a Marine Honor Guard and each time she enters or leaves a building or vehicle, or begins or ends a speech, she should be given a 21 gun salute!

That’s the trick of the anti gun legislator, claim the law is about one specific thing then write it to be as broad as possible. You can bet that Fienstein, Bernie, Schumer, Franken, Bloomberg, and others if their treasonous ilk, are waiting for the day tha they get bach both houses, and have an ultra left socialist as president, and a vague overly broad, open to interpretation, laws are already in place. Remember John Browning’s first full automatic firearm was an 1873 Winchester lever action rifle,fitted with a spring loaded flapper at the muzzle with linkage attached to the lever to prove the theory he had that the gas produced from firing could be used to operate the rifle. And in WWII, a gunsmith in New Zealand, at a time when they were fearing a Japanese invasion,and the nation had few machine guns, designed a way to convert bolt action enfields into full automatic rifles called the Charlton. They could easily be made in any small machine shop or even with hand tools, the design not only worked, but worked quite well, I would love to get a set of the blue prints also when I was a teenager, after watching The Rifleman, I drilled and tapped the lever of my model 94, for a screw that would trip the trigger, just like Chuck Connors rifle, I could dump the 7 shot magazine in less than a second

A 30 round magazine allows me to increase my rate of fire per minute over a five round magazine. Would they use that as a legal open door to go after higher capacity magazines? The way it is written, you certainly could make the argument.

Except as provided in paragraph (2), on and after the date that is 180 days after the date of enactment of this subsection, it shall be unlawful for any person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or af-fecting interstate or foreign commerce,

And here we go again. What if the device is manufactured and sold and kept within a single state? Didn’t this come up with a suppressor case recently? The federal government cannot (Constitutionally speaking) regulate intrastate commerce. Though most of what the fed does violates the interstate commerce clause because we allowed it so.

It is considered to “affect” interstate commerce. Read Wickard v. Filburn and U.S. v. Lopez 514 U.S. 549 (1995) to get a current understanding of the law. Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. They also have the power to do whatever else is “necessary and proper” to regulate interstate commerce.

As I was reading it, one could still have these devices installed on your rifle, so long as your possession was not for the purposes of interstate sales. Is this interpretation correct? That would provide a work around for the potential fifth amendment violation. I’m no lawyer, so anyone with a legal background, please chime in.

“Is this interpretation correct?” No. The Commerce Clause has been ruled (since at least 1942) to grant Congress the power to regulate things that are neither interstate nor commerce and the statute bans possession.

On and after the date that is 180 days after the date of enactment of this subsection, it shall be unlawful for any person to actuate the trigger or other firing mechanism of any firearm without first, and at every subsequent actuation thereafter, verbally exclaiming, in such a way appropriate to the environment as to be audible over background noise, “One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi!”

Senator Murkowski may wander across the aisle on social issues, but I think she’s pretty good on guns. We Alaskans are independent socialists, after all. We like government money, but otherwise want to be left alone (guns and marijuana).

So if I put a can on my AR and the backpressure ups the cyclic rate I would be violating the catch-all at the end? What about a lighter trigger that allows me to pull it quicker than a parts kit trigger?

Isn’t murdering people against the law? Guess that didn’t work. Criminals don’t follow laws. Making things illegal only helps the black market. This country has a mental problem that no one wants to talk about or we might hurt their feelings.

Senator Murkowski may wander across the aisle on social issues, but I think she’s pretty good on guns. We Alaskans are independent socialists, after all. We like government money, but otherwise want to be left alone (guns and marijuana).

A COLD HARD LOOK AT MASS MURDER IN AMERICA AND THE FUTURE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT. Opinion by JLP.

Because we had a bunch of greedy Merchants (Founding Fathers) running the Government we had an unnecessary war which resulted in us missing out on a Parliamentary Government which gave us a Representative Corrupt sham democracy and a ridiculous Constitution written in stone that for all practical purposes is almost impossible to change especially in these divisive times. As a consequence of all this we now have a Government run by corruption and often times heavily influenced by popular opinion not by common sense. The Supreme Court is a dictatorship pure and simple and beholding to no one except an angry public. The Courts have become the only way any Constitutional changes can be made due to our ridiculous two party system of extremes so most of the time its done by simply ignoring the Constitution as though it does not exist.

The Second Amendment was made during a time when we only had 3 million people not over 300 million people as we have today. In those times if there had been full auto weapons or even semi-auto’s with bump fire stocks do you really think the Rich Leaders that were in power then would have given the people the right to own such weapons? The answer is no because that of course would have threatened their power because with such weapons they would have realized that only a few hundred people could have threatened their power over everyone.

Today we have the added problem of more mentally ill people than we have ever had it the country’s history. We have a declining way of life with less and less high paying jobs for the common worker. We have high divorce rates that cause many young men to go off the deep end. We have both culture clashes and ethnic hatreds between the far left and far right. We have a health care system that gives people next to nothing in affordable coverage which results in many people having no money for both health care and mental health care. Our health care is the most expensive in the world and gives us the least service from it. Its become so shameful that some 3rd world African countries have less child mortality than we do.

When all these factors are taken into consideration the Second Amendment is on very fragile ground. Most Americans today do not own guns (70 per cent of the population at last count this week). More and more non gun owners view the Second Amendment and those that support it as Right Wing Nut Cases that are 10 times the danger to them in their everyday lives than any attack by a foreign army or a foreign group of terrorists and one can hardly blame them as out of all the multitudes of mass murders in the last couple of decades only two were connected to foreign people or ideology and the rest were by and large by you guessed it done by Right Wing Nut Cases with guys like Dillon Roof their hero and star poster boy waving a Confederate flag.

All of this effects the decisions of both the lower courts and the Supreme Court who view gun ownership as a threat to their power both personally and through the bad public publicity they get if they vote pro Second Amendment on anything. It took them decades and decades to even consider hearing a meaningful case on the Second Amendment and then if it had not been for only 1 tie breaking vote by the most hated man on the court Scalia, today the Second Amendment for all practical purposes would be only an illusion. Remember that it was only one vote that basically saved it then but that was then not now and Scalia is dead and gone and forgotten by the Court. If the Dems do regain power and appoint more Liberals to the Court then the Second Amendment really will not anymore have a snowballs chance in hell of being anything more than symbolic. And of course even if this does not happen the lower courts are just as much a threat to the Second Amendment as the Supreme Court is. Letting the lower Courts take the heat and then refusing to hear Second Amendment cases is something the corrupt Supreme Court has done for decades and decades and that is certainly not going to change especially with all the mass murders that have become almost a Macabre weekly form of entertainment with the News Media and a dumb founded, horrified and mesmerized public glued daily to their Social Media pages now too terrorized to go to any gathering with large crowds and they are getting more and more fed up with all the mayhem.

With the declining gun ownership in this country even the Gun Lobby is becoming more and more impotent and the voting pro gun people less and less effective at the ballet box as well. East and West Coast States have placed so many restrictions on modern firearms that many now are illegal to own and never will be again. A Nationwide Ban is becoming more and more of a reality and if this last mass shooting had been done under a Democratic Majority several millions semi auto hand guns and rifles would already have been on their way to the smelter. Australia’s horrific pictures of thousands of guns being melted down would pale in comparison to Americas arsenal of guns as American own 40 percent of all privately owned weapons in the world while being only 30 per cent of the American population. I think any clear thinking political scientist can see where this is all going as far a future gun ownership is concerned.

Lets face cold hard facts even the Republicans will eventually reach a point where they will no longer be able to pander to the NRA as the mass murders have become so horrific and so common no civilized society is going to put up with the mayhem much longer and their solution will be more and more bans on more and more types of weapons and the ones left for legal ownership will be so difficult and expensive to get that the common man will not be able to afford it or want to jump through all the hoops to even get one. But technically they will say you still have Second Amendment rights because after all the Founding Fathers weapons (flint lock muzzle loaders) are still legal (at least for now). Now where did I put my old Davy Crocket Coon Skin Cap and by Grand fathers old muzzle loader.

You really shouldn’t project your own inadequacy on other people. Especially on smart and educated people like Founding Fathers.
Other than that your whole post sucks. So much wrong on one heap. Doesn’t your head hurt?

Feinstein is grandstanding. She knows that the legislation is not needed – bump fire stocks could be banned with a simple change in ATF regulations, no additional legislation required. She’s grabbing for headlines, knowing full well that the legislation is not really needed to initiate the change and that the deck is stacked in Congress against any gun control legislation. But hey, she looks good to her voter base.

…”In those times if there had been full auto weapons or even semi-auto’s with bump fire stocks do you really think the Rich Leaders that were in power then would have given the people the right to own such weapons?…”

Maybe not bump-stocks specifically but the rest were available, just expensive.

As a fellow engineer I have to agree with a reply posted above. These accessories merely are an enhancement to utilizing an AR, similar to saying sheets on a bed make it more comfortable. All the devices described in the bill are not increasing the guns designed rate of fire. At some point, the stock internals will not be able to keep up with even simulated rates of fire up to a certain rate without upgrading parts. I say her bill is bullsh*t

This bill actually has a chance of passing and being signed into law. It’s time to write to your senators and donate. I wrote to all my representatives (All three Democrats that responded with laughter) and dropped money into the NRA and SAF funds.

We need to stop the gun grabbers here. If they get this they have a victory and momentum to take more. Stop them here and make them have to fight for bumpstocks bans for the next 20 years instead of giving them an inroad to ban more things.

This may actually be a positive development that the Senator is attempting legislative action. I am not a lawyer but as I understand it if Congress considers a bill on something like this legislatively and it fails as most do that would preclude the ATF from ruling on it administratively.

Can Ralph or anybody else expand on the nuances of this or just tell me I am wrong?

If it fails legislatively, the ATF, could still rule, that is why the NRA wants the ATF to make a ruling, for if they do, it will be against this one specific thing, legislation would be purposely vague and broad, and God only knows what riders, might be attached, during passage, plus the libturds would see it as the first chink in the armor, and smelling blood would clammer for more and more “sensible” restrictions first semi autos, then pump action, lever action, and don’t forget about those bolt action scoped sniper rifles, also it would then remove the urgency to legislate, and as past experience shows laws passed in the heat of emotion are usually bad laws, look at the patriot act, for instance. An ATF ruling would probably be the much lessor of two evils. Go to youtube, and search the words “aikens accelerator” , a bumpfire stock using a spring, that first got ATF approval, then was declared illegal when the ATF reversed itself a few months later.

Anyone else ever notice the timing of these acts conveniently when Congress is about to discuss major pro gun legislation? It just seems to convenient, and as the old saying goes, “Too many coincidences are seldom coincidental”.

this women is dumber than dumb !! first might i say this shooter had no record therefore he could have bought as many class III weapons as he wanted fo a 200 dollar federal stamp less than the going price of a Bumpski and done some serious killing with better more killable guns-
Bump fire modifications have been on the market for 50 yrs, from stocks to attachable trigger springs that bump the trigger forward and thru tapping this accelerates the rate of fire in weapons with standard barrels, springs etc this bump fire senario knocks the hell out of a weapon rendering its lifespan short.
Bump firing does not need enhancements like stocks or triggers either-its a skill acquired thru practice usually learned in an hr or so placing the rifle but into your hip then using your middle finger to tap the trigger in a repetitious manner one can use this method on 45 auto pistols as well and it downloads a 40 round clip in 3-4 seconds in most weapons using stacked double clips that about 80 rounds in less than 10 seconds !! who needs a bumpski !! its a fun ad on for a day at the range unless your shooting into a crowd of 10,000 people its hard to hit what your aiming at just spraying ammo–i have seen good shooters skilled at bump firing blow the hell ot of pumpkins and melons–So whats next? should Finestein call for the removal of middle fingers of all gun owners to prevent basic bump firing–not any more stupid that her proposal itself-stupid is as stupid does–

What about a fresh AR build? I pick & choose which components to use in the build? My design would include a drop in trigger, lighter springs and any other thing to make playing the trigger easier for my bad hands? Since it is a custom 1 of gun, would it be subject to this law as all parts would be original to the firearm?

The NRA can afford to pay hundreds of individuals to inundate social media with opinions against gun control. We can’t let them win. We should make it as difficult as we possibly can for people to obtain weapons of war. A person should not be able to walk into a store and purchase the equivalent of a machine gun. This is common sense legislation, part of any well regulated militia.